Barnabas File

“There is a time   for everything,   and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, . . . a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance.” -- Ecclesiastes 3:1-2, 4, NIV   During these days of pandemic, much of what we consider normal and routine has changed.  We are no longer able or willing to pursue life in the ways we always have.  A heart-wrenching challenge for family members has been their separation from loved ones who have been hospitalized.  Many are denied physical access to those who are dying due to concern about the COVID-19 infection.     Mourning has also been a challenging in a time of social distancing and mask-wearing.  More families have opted for simple graveside services with family and close friends, giving up on a memorial service or hoping to have a fitting service later.   These are als...

Although I say that I am not a theologian, my seminary professor friends persist in saying, “Every believer is a theologian.”  From their perspective, whenever you ask a question that involves faith, your relationship to God, or God’s relationship to the world, you are doing theology. When my twelve-year-old granddaughter brings up the violence in the television miniseries “The Bible” and I ask her, “How do you handle that?,” I am asking a theological question.  Why does God not only allow violence but, according to the Hebrew Bible, condone it? We ask theological questions all the time. First, we ask these questions in the midst of life.  When we encounter pain, death, and violence, we try to make sense of it all and, as religious people, practice this sense-making in the context of our Christian commitment. Second, we often ask these questions when we experience personal relationships that confuse or hurt us.  When trust is broken, commitment i...

“ Finally Pilate handed him over to them to be crucified. So the soldiers took charge of Jesus.    Carrying his own cross, he went out to the place of the Skull (which in Aramaic is called Golgotha).  There they crucified him, and with him two others—one on each side and Jesus in the middle.”—John 19:16-18, NIV The week began with violence.  On Sunday afternoon, I was on the north side of Kansas City when a gunman shot and killed three people on the south side.  Once again, violence has been visited on the innocent, something that seems all too common in our nation.  And once again the hate was directed against the faithful.  The fact that the gunman intended to kill Jews and ended killing Christians only reminds us that an attack based on hatred against any person—no matter that person’s race, faith, or social status—is an attack on all of us.  This is a week that ends in violence.  Jesus is flogged, ridiculed, forc...